The Professional (1981) on Netflix
French agent Josselin Beaumont is sent to Malagawi to kill President N'Jala. When policy shifts, his service denounces him to N'Jala, and after two years he returns to Paris to settle scores.
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Trailer
Plot summary
Josselin Beaumont, known as Joss, accepts a contract from the French secret service to kill Colonel N'Jala, the president for life of Malagawi. Then French policy toward the country shifts, and rather than call him home, officials denounce him to N'Jala. A quick trial, where he is drugged into confessing, ends in a sentence of forced labor, and he spends two years in a prison camp. He escapes and reaches Paris, where he tells Colonel Martin that he will carry out the contract he was given during N'Jala's coming official visit, and that he means to settle accounts with the service. Commissioner Rosen leads the search for him.
Cast
Show all 20 cast
- Claude-Bernard Perotas Agent service secret 3
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Professional (1981)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Before making The Professional, Jean-Paul Belmondo was set to star in Yves Boisset's Barracuda, a film partly inspired by the 1974-77 Françoise Claustre hostage affair in Chad; the pair parted ways after Boisset wanted references to the Claustre affair and Belmondo wanted a straight adventure film.
- The first draft of the screenplay by Michel Audiard failed to impress Georges Lautner, Jean-Paul Belmondo and producer Alexandre Mnouchkine; Audiard was reportedly busy with Garde a vue, so Francis Veber was brought in as script doctor and Audiard's son Jacques ended up credited for the screenplay.
- The African prison scenes were shot in the Camargue, not Africa, with Montpellier university students hired as extras, and Georges Lautner had to film the opening scene with a telephoto lens because of problems with the set.
- Thanks to its subject matter and improving relations between France and the Communist Bloc, The Professional got a limited release in the Soviet Union and Soviet-aligned states such as Poland, where it became a household name.
- The final sequence of The Professional departed from what the producers had in mind, but was kept in the film because Jean-Paul Belmondo and director Georges Lautner insisted on it.
- The story and its political backdrop were inspired by France's tangled diplomatic relations with its former African colonies during the Françafrique era under Jacques Foccart.
